Never did I think my first foray back into food blogging (as opposed to walking blogging-- is that a thing?) would be a chili recipe. I wouldn't have thought it would be a recipe at all, given that a lot of dinners here lately have taken the form of hummus-pita-carrot sticks or bread-cheese-bing cherries or here-is-a-plastic-tray-of-sushi. On the other hand, life without recipes has meant the occasional creative masterpiece, which I have proceeded to never, ever tell you about. The other day I had some stuff I wanted to use up-- actually, not much stuff, just more of the endless supply of green chili peppers I've got in my freezer and half a bag of carrots-- and so I bought a lot of cans of beans and tomatoes and some bulk cashews and made some vegetarian chili, which turned out to be the most delicious vegetarian chili I have ever made, even though most of it came from cans. This is how it went:

Saute in about 2 T. oil:

One big onion, chopped

several fresh (or frozen!) chilis, minced

When onions are softening, add:

a few carrots, diced

Saute for a few minutes, then add:

a big 28 oz. can diced tomatoes

small (15 oz.) cans of chickpeas, red chili beans, and black beans, or some other combination of beans (but the chickpeas are essential)

salt

really quite a lot of chili powder

much more modest shakes of powdered ancho chili, white pepper, and red pepper flakes (or whatever similar items you have around to complicate the spice profile)

a tomato-can-full of water

Bring everything to a boil and cook for 15 minutes. Now add:

about 10 oz. of firm tofu, diced small

about 1 c. of whole raw cashews

Stir and adjust the salt and spices to taste. Add:

1/4 c. molasses (yess)

juice of half a lime

Simmer 10 minutes or so more, adjust any flavors to taste (especially salt), and serve with the most awesome easy cornbread (below).

This chili has a delightful sweetness due to the cooked carrots and onions, naturally sweet cashews, and molasses. The molasses, as it turns out, also gives it an amazing, complex depth of flavor. I also like the filling sturdiness of the multiple proteins: several kinds of bean, tofu and nuts all in one place. And it was very easy and quick.

Now for delicious and quick matching cornbread:

​Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a medium-sized bowl, mix:

1 c. all-purpose flour, or whatever

1 c. cornmeal

1 t. baking soda

1 t. baking powder

generous 1/2 t. salt

brown sugar to taste (I probably used about 1/4 c.)

Since you are using brown sugar, I recommend mixing the dry ingredients with your fingers to break up any lumps. Then add:

1 1/2 c. milk

Mix. It will seem too runny, don't worry about it. Pour into buttered 8x8 dish and bake about 25 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Let it cool some and then eat it with butter (and chili).

Brown sugar instead of white took this cornbread to a whole new level. Both the bread and the chili were addictive. I kept going back to the kitchen to take little bites. So will you. The whole thing took approximately 45 minutes.​

All right, all right. Who needs a recipe to make a smoothie? Nobody, that's who. By definition, a smoothie is just a bunch of stuff you throw in a blender. Nevertheless, a year or so ago, I was staying with my parents; my mom was starting to go through chemo for a non-Hodgkins lymphoma (she's okay); and smoothies were recommended as a way for her to effortlessly take in some extra calories. For my 80-something-year-old stepfather, for whom smoothies are not part of his daily experience, you would have thought the nurses had recommended he feed her on homemade Beef Wellington. I gave demos. My stepfather watched carefully, frowned. They bought an immersion blender. Still, it was rumored that , after I left, smoothies did not get made until my mom felt enough better to go back into the kitchen.

So maybe it IS rocket science, after all. I will say: I work at a restaurant that sells a variety of fresh blended juices, fruit-and-yogurt drinks, and milkshakes. Sometimes a customer comes in and asks for "a smoothie," and looks perturbed when asked to elaborate further. What might they be looking for in their smoothie? Do they just want fruit and ice and such? Do they want yogurt and milk? Do they want something with ice cream? The weird part is, some of them don't know. They are accustomed to ordering a "smoothie," and having not the faintest idea what they are putting into their mouths.

While smoothies can take an infinite variety of forms, the following basic formula is how I go about making a smoothie. I generally make about 32 oz. of smoothie at once, which is enough for two tall glasses, one for me and one for my husband. Also note that we treat these smoothies as a meal, not a beverage. Therefore they have enough calories for a light meal, and always contain some fat and protein. If you make a habit of drinking them as a beverage in addition to a meal, you will get fat.

Basic formula:

2 c. liquid, such as nut milk, soy milk, coconut water. For a while I used juice, but my husband found that the sugar content was making him feel queasy. Cow milk does not agree with us too well, so I rarely use that.

About 2 t. protein powder. I do not like the texture of protein powder, so I keep it minimal, but add a little for the nutritional boost.

Fat. This is necessary to make the smoothie filling. An avocado, a couple tablespoons of nut butter, canned coconut milk, or sour cream are all good candidates.

Enough fruit and vegetables to fill the blender to the 4 c. mark. The fruit can be anything you desire and/or want to use up: bananas, mangoes, berries, peaches, melon, kiwi, cherries, pineapple. It is nice to use a little bit of frozen fruit, as it chills the smoothie. A few leaves of leafy greens ( e.g., spinach, lettuce, kale) really give the smoothie depth of flavor as well as beneficial nutrients. Remember to remove tough stems and ribs from leaves such as kale.

Optional: yogurt, anything else you are looking to use up.

Here are some examples of smoothies that followed this basic formula, and ended up being exceptionally tasty:

Finally, a morning when I do not need to go to work. Breakfast, however, remains the same: lemon water, black coffee (I just feel like it), smoothie made of coconut milk from a carton, plain yogurt, canned pumpkin, hemp protein powder, peanut butter, strawberries, banana and kale. This was a top-notch smoothie and I would make it again. For each 16 oz-ish smoothie:

1 cup coconut milk from a carton

2 T. plain yogurt

1 T. canned pumpkin (optional)

1 t. protein powder of your choice

2 T. natural peanut butter

1-3 strawberries, depending on size

1/2 banana

about 2 medium-sized leaves kale

After breakfast and a shower, I have a cup of decaf coffee, this time with half and half, while I write. At noon, I switch to regular coffee and also switch to reading (Martha Grimes' TheAnodyne Necklace). For lunch, I have Whole Foods tequila-lime tortilla chips (actually I had a few of these before lunch as well), with Whole Foods guacamole from last Friday that has become fairly discolored but is still good!, and the last of the pickled shallots; also a dish of sliced almonds.

At 3:00, after a trip to the store and a run, I have another cup of decaf with half and half, while beginning to plot out a backpacking trip my kid and I are planning to do at the end of this month.

Afterwards, I realize I meant to buy some kind of nice bakery bread, not sliced sandwich bread like Rudi's. I give kid $12 and send them down the street to the bakery, instructing them to get a good loaf of bread (around $6-7) and keep the change as payment for the job, and/or buy themselves a bakery treat. Kid comes home with something unusual (pesto-asiago bread, perhaps?) and eating a rosemary shortbread cookie. I'd told kid to get any kind of bread they wanted. But it did not occur to me that pesto-asiago was a possible outcome.

While kid gets the bread, I start the dried chickpeas cooking, in order to make Madhur Jaffrey's Spanish-Style Spinach with Chickpeas for dinner. I also make the dough for Molly Yeh's cardamom-lingonberry hamantaschen, finally. Then the chickpeas need to cook and the dough to chill for a good couple of hours. Meanwhile, I wash dishes, prep the spinach and garlic, feed the cat, catch up on my food diary, look at stuff on Facebook. Around 6:30, I check the chickpeas-- soft. Get the spinach dish cooking while I roll out the dough for the hamantaschen.

About this time I realize there is no sugar in the hamantasch dough. Really? I check the recipe again. Nope. I guess pies don't have sugar in the crust. Yeh says to use powdered sugar to "flour" the board when the dough is rolled out. I've never heard of doing this, and the whole process ends up very sticky and not particularly efficient. I end up patting out a lot of the circles with my hands instead of rolling. Still, in the end I have 19 serviceable-looking hamantaschen. I may have underbaked them a little. They are softer and more tender than I expected, also less sweet. But my husband, for whom I baked them as his "pie-of-the-month" (er, the month of March-- we're a bit behind), really likes them. I certainly think they are okay too.

​But what I really liked was the Spinach with Chickpeas! Apart from the fact that it takes forever to boil the dried chickpeas, this is a simple recipe. And you could always go with canned. Lots of pungent spices. And I found that long boiling of the spinach with the lid off (having added some extra water), as the recipe instructs, results in much more pleasant results than spinach boiled with the lid on. The texture is so much less mushy. I may do this from now on. We served the spinach and chickpea dish simply, in bowls with hunks of the pesto-asiago bread on the side.

For dessert, while watching The Great British Bake-off on YouTube, we ate two hamantaschen apiece.

Well, drat. Maybe all that low-appetite and crappy feeling and exhaustion after work last night and so forth was because I was getting sick. Not much doubt about it now. Still hanging in there, though; it's not too serious as yet.

Dinner: banana-peach muffins in the Amy Dacyczyn pattern, bowls of plain Greek yogurt with berries, maple syrup, and granola. I have never really had Greek yogurt served this way before (my household is partial to the little flavored cups), and it is surprisingly delicious. So much creamier, so much less tart than a low-fat plain yogurt. It would probably even taste good without sweetening it with maple syrup. A revelation. Except, another revelation: I feel queasy after eating it. Too much dairy again. Better in small quantities. Or maybe I am just sick.

Measurements are approximate! (except the milk.) Don't worry so much! Note that the sour cream is standing in for oil in this recipe, quite successfully.

Mix together dry ingredients. Stir in fruit until coated with flour. Mix in wet ingredients. Divide into 12 (or so) greased muffin cups, and bake 20 minutes at 400 degrees, or until toothpick comes out clean. Remove from pan and cool 20 minutes before eating, preferably warm with butter.

Snacks: 3 cups of coffee, 2 regular, 1 decaf, with half and half. Cup of Echinacea Plus tea mid-morning. Cup of Pero with honey and half & half in late morning, and another one in the mid-afternoon. I'm not exactly pushing fluids on purpose, but it is working out that way. A mandarin orange while making dinner, because I was on the phone a long time with a friend and started dinner late and I am starving.

Sorry. But, it's true, your food was once alive. Also, I lost my camera for two weeks, remember?

I have a new default way of cooking chicken. Originally, it was adapted from a recipe I'm sure I could no longer find on the internet... something, e.g., from Allrecipes or Epicurious. But I've found that the method is simple, infinitely adaptable and consistently comes out well. So here is a sort of universal braised chicken recipe, in the spirit of Amy Dacyczyn's muffins.

You will need:*chicken (I like dark meat better for this-- and in general!-- but white meat works okay too)*salt and pepper*some kind of cooking oil*butter*bouillon, Better-than-Bouillon, soy sauce, or some other salty/umami flavoring*aromatic(s) such as garlic, onion, fresh ginger, etc.*fresh herbs if you have some lying around

1) Heat a large frying pan over medium-high heat until hot. Add a small amount of cooking oil (your choice; olive is good). Sprinkle your chicken pieces with salt and pepper (or do this in the pan). Brown chicken pieces for 3-4 minutes on each side, just to give them a bit of color.

2) Push your chicken pieces out towards the side of the pan a bit in order to create a well in the center. Throw in a a chunk of butter (maybe 2-3 T.). As the butter is melting, add your bouillon or etc. I most often use about a teaspoon of Better-than-Bouillon (vegetable or chicken flavor works). A single bouillon cube would work. A couple of tablespoons of tamari or a little gochu jang would probably work. Use whatever you have around, but something that is fairly concentrated: not canned or boxed broth. Whatever it is will be melting into the butter as you throw your aromatics into the well: a few slices of garlic, half a sliced onion, slices of ginger root, chopped shallot, or whatever you have that needs using up. There's no need to chop these finely; they are there to impart flavor to the liquid.

3) Lay a few sprigs of fresh herbs, etc., over the top of the chicken (again, no need to chop). I know that you have something languishing in your refrigerator that just needs a good home: leftover parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, rosemary, sage, thyme... something you bought for a recipe and didn't use up. Perhaps some fresh scallions. Or maybe you don't have any of these, and you want to throw in some carrots or celery or mushrooms at this point. Go for it. Just lay 'em on top.

​4) The pan should be bubbling like crazy, the butter browning, the kitchen scented with garlic and onion and herbs. Add a bit of water to the pan-- not too much, enough to cover the bottom by about 1/4-1/2 inch. Put a lid on it and turn the heat down (but not so much so that it stops bubbling-- you want a gentle-to-moderate bubble). Cook for about 45 minutes for chicken on the bone; you could (and should) get away with less for thin white meat. When you open the lid, the liquid will have concentrated into a delicious sauce for rice or bread, and your chicken will be moist and very flavorful.

This is the kind of chicken that you can throw together in about 10 minutes (mostly the time it takes to brown the meat), then allow to cook while you make the other components of the meal. It's perfect for someone like me, who so often has a vegetable dish that I intend to make the star of the evening; I have a habit of simply writing down "protein" on my shopping list as a reminder that I need to purchase something to go with the vegetable-of-the-day. This chicken can be, and often is, that protein. And you don't need to buy anything except the chicken, because everything else is already in your pantry. Yay!

In case you were wondering, this is not an original photo. However, it is a very nice picture of muffins.

​

Does everybody remember Amy Dacyczyn, of The Tightwad Gazette? Her newsletter was an inspiration in the 1990s to everyone wanting tips and tricks for getting off the personal consumption treadmill. If Your Money or Your Life was the Bible of the voluntary simplicity movement, Dacyczyn's work was the marginalia: all the comments, the letters, the life hacks, the small stuff of which the big ideas are made. I devoured the thick compendium of all her newsletters in 2002, as my first husband and I were struggling to get out of debt and achieve a reasonable quality of life with two very low incomes, a foster teenager, and a baby.

(What is Dacyczyn doing now? Well, it seems that she just went ahead and retired. Trent Hamm of The Simple Dollar did an interview with her in 2014, for those that are looking for an update, but I can't promise it's very exciting.)

Now, at the risk perhaps of copyright infringement (but I have a feeling she wouldn't care), I'd like to share the single most useful recipe I have ever encountered, courtesy of this fine and resourceful writer. The "Little Multigrain Herb Muffins" I just posted are based on this recipe, as are pretty much all other muffins I make. (I literally keep her 959-page tome in my household for this sole purpose-- pp. 466-468!) As the primary cook for a new family in 2002, the very concept was earth-shattering: a "recipe" that did not require you to go out and buy special ingredients, but which gave you a blueprint for transforming whatever you already had lying around into something delicious. You can find the entirety of her article here; the crucial text, to me, reads

Instead of sharing a single muffin recipe, I wanted to share the process of creating muffin recipes. This will allow you to use ingredients that are cheap in your part of the country, use up odd leftovers, and accommodate dietary restrictions.

Each of the components above gets some discussion from Dacyczyn (again, see here), but here are some notes from me (some of which overlap with hers):

*It is easiest if at least 1 cup of the grain is white all-purpose flour. The rest can be pretty much anything you want: whole wheat flour, other grain flours, oats, cornmeal, breakfast cereal (I've done this), stale baked goods. Usually I use 3 or 4 things. I think one time I used Grapenuts, because nobody likes them, including me. They worked fine.*You can substitute other interesting liquids for milk.*fat can be anything but it is obviously desirable to liquify it before adding to the muffins. Besides butter, oil, shortening, etc., I have also used things like sour cream and peanut butter. *If you choose to use a liquid form of sweetener (honey, maple syrup, that corn syrup that's been in the back of your cupboard for five years, Torani raspberry Italian soda syrup), reduce the quantity of milk/liquid by 1/4 c.*Use a full 1 T. of baking powder if you have any significant quantity of additions. Dacyczyn's universal recipe actually just reads "2 t. baking powder," but I usually go with 3 t. unless the muffins are very tiny.*You can add a little more salt than this if you like, especially as the trend has gone towards sweet+salty baked goods*Be creative about additions. I have added many different fruits (fresh and dried), nuts, coconut, chocolate, herbs, cheeses, vegetables, and more. Or, if you don't have much in the way of additions, you can simply create an interesting texture and taste through mixing grains and adding spices or herbs. Just use what you have. It is so easy.

Whatever you have stirred up: grease muffin tins, or use papers, fill cups about 2/3 full, and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool another 20 minutes before consuming.

The universal muffin recipe should never be allowed to die. Please, if anyone knows any more great universal recipes, I would love to hear about them.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all the grains, sugar, baking powder and salt. Stir in the fresh herbs. Add egg, milk, and shortening or oil and stir just until mixed. Divide into muffin cups-- this may not make quite a full dozen, because there are not many "additions" to these muffins. I got 11 petite muffins. Bake for about 20 minutes, until browned on top and a toothpick comes out clean.

​Allow to cool 20-30 minutes, then serve still warm with butter. That is the best way.

Seriously, why? Why would anyone, ever, buy salad dressing in a bottle? Back when I met my husband, he was living with his niece and grand-niece, and their refrigerator always had several open bottles of salad dressing in it, all different flavors. One time, when he was sick, I went through the cabinet and found many more, unopened bottles, some of which were expired. They hoarded salad dressing. A lot of it got thrown out. It cost them, I would guess, $2-$4 per bottle. Yet, it contained ingredients like (for instance), xanthan gum, citric acid, propylene glycol alginate (what?), and Polysorbate 60. And, more importantly, it tasted gross. It tasted like childhood and the grudging consumption of bowls of iceberg lettuce and cucumber doused with Catalina. It tasted like hospital cafeterias and Wendy's salad bar. Do people not understand how incredibly easy it is to "make your own salad dressing?" It hardly even rises to the definition of "make your own," unless whisking something with a fork is an act of creation. A fat, an acid, seasoning. Whisk. Eat delicious salad.

Okay, we're going to walk you through this. 1) Get a small bowl out of the cupboard.2) Pour some oil into the bowl. Olive oil tastes good and is a common choice. Anything will do, though.3) Pour some acid into the bowl, probably about 1/3-1/2 as much as you did oil. No need to measure, that's just complicating matters. Delicious acids: balsamic vinegar. Lemon juice. Apple cider vinegar. Red wine vinegar. But use whatever you have. Lime juice. Herb vinegar. Hell, white vinegar for cleaning is better than Kraft. Whatever. I have used salsa (tomatoes are acidic).4) Season with salt and pepper.5) Whisk.6) Drizzle over salad (but not more than a few minutes before you want to eat it, or it will wilt). Toss (or don't bother, seriously). Eat delicious salad.

​If you made too much, put the rest in a jar and shake it up when you want to eat delicious salad again tomorrow. But this is so, so, so very easy to "make" that you can really just do it fresh every time you have a salad. Why is there bottled salad dressing? Why?

Advanced practice:7) If you're the sort of person who is dismayed that the dressing you just made is not sweet like Catalina (and sometimes I am), you can add a little honey or maple syrup before whisking. Granulated sugar does not work so well. Anything liquid is okay, though. I've used corn syrup (shh). I've used the raspberry Italian soda syrup that my daughter bought for making sno-cones four years ago. Whatever.8) Add a little mustard with the above sweeteners. Voila! Honey mustard dressing.9) If you like your dressing creamy, you can add a small spoonful of sour cream or mayonnaise. This works well with the salsa I mentioned before: Southwestern dressing!10) Add soy sauce to your dressing instead of salt-- voila! Asian dressing! Using peanut or sesame oil here works well, as does a sprinkling of powdered ginger. Rice vinegar can be a good acid. But don't be afraid to mix and match: soy sauce, lemon, and olive oil makes a perfectly respectable dressing.

I guarantee you, once you get in the habit of dressing your own salads with whatever you have lying around in your kitchen, you will feel really stupid for ever buying bottled dressing. It's not more convenient. It isn't cheaper. And it doesn't taste better. Who convinced consumers that they needed Kraft French Dressing and Hidden Valley Ranch? We Americans are a bunch of dumbasses. That is all. Open your cupboard and take back your salad. Peace.

My husband and I recently watched the movie Waitress, a charming Adrienne Shelly film featuring a lot of mouthwatering pies, plus Keri Russell looking adorable in a diner waitress uniform. Every man's fantasy: hot waitress bakes you pie regularly. Also, it's a shame what happened to Adrienne Shelly. But I digress.

​As I mentioned previously, I am baking my husband a pie-of-the-month this year (though my waitressing uniform is not nearly as hot as Keri Russell's). Watching pies unfold onscreen, smooth chocolate and fillings poured lusciously into crusts, often over perfect fruit, made me desperate to reproduce some of them (and John desperate to eat them). In particular, the Lonely Chicago Pie attracted me. I wasn't really satisfied, though, with the recipes that other people, similarly inspired, had invented and posted on the internet, so I went looking for something that combined a blend of mixed berries with really dark chocolate (not a pudding or a mousse). Actually, to be honest, the recipe I just linked is much closer to what I was looking for than anything I was able to find that day, and if I'd found it then I might have tried it.

I ended up torn between a fairly dense chocolate-and-berry pie from Marie Carter, and this more pudding-y pie from Driscoll's that had the advantage of a whipped cream topping. I love whipped cream and it seemed desirable for balancing the rich chocolate. Ultimately I decided to combine the two, and this dessert was born.

Photo credit: Julie Lin

Now, the chocolate layer of this dessert is really very solid, more like something I would call a torte than a pie. However, there are a lot of berries, both inside and on top, and a thick layer of cream that fairly shouts "French Silk Pie," and of course it is pie-shaped, because it is baked in a pie pan. My daughter announced that it was neither cake nor pie, but shared aspects of both; she, continually alert for connections to gender and sexuality politics, delightedly declared it a "non-binary dessert."

The apple pie I posted before: totally heteronormative.

Feeling "non-binary dessert" was a bit clunky, I suggested "non-pienary," and she, being fourteen, thought that was brilliant. This recipe is so named henceforth.

Filling: Melt together the other stick of butter and 1 c. good-quality dark chocolate chips. Remove from heat, cool slightly, and gradually stir in 1/2 c. brown sugar, 1/2 c. white sugar, and 2 beaten eggs, a little at a time. Add 1/2 c. flour, 1 t. vanilla, and about 3/4 c. of raspberries and 1/2 c. blueberries, give or take. Mash the berries a little before using. Pour it all in the crust and bake 45 minutes. Chill until entirely cooled, if possible, before topping.

Topping: Puree one small package of raspberries in the blender, then strain through a sieve to remove seedy parts. Add a spoonful or two of sugar. Whip 2 c., of heavy cream with 2 T. of powdered sugar and a little bit of vanilla (1/2-1 t.). Mound the pie with the cream. Spoon little dollops of raspberry puree onto the cream and use toothpick to swirl. Top pie with plenty of extra berries. Serve with dashes of extra raspberry puree on the plate.

Mix 2 c. all-purpose flour with 1 t. salt. Rub in 2/3 c. shortening with your fingertips until the mixture becomes a fine meal with lumps no larger than peas. Add 6 T. icy cold water and mix gently. Probably the dough will still be too dry to push all together into one lump. If so, add more water, 1 T. at a time, until you can get the dough to hang together. Be gentle, don't knead. It's okay if it's a little dry and has cracks in it; that's better than sticky.

Cut the dough in half with a knife and refrigerate one half while you are rolling out the other. Flour a board and your rolling pin, and roll out dough until it is slightly larger around than the rim of your pie pan. Fold in half gently, lift, place in pie pan, and center.​

Remove the other half of the pie dough from the refrigerator. Roll out as before. Fold, lift, and center on top of the pie. Crimp the edges of the bottom and top crusts together, remembering that it is OK if the pie looks a little messy and imperfect-- this is how we know we did not buy a frozen crust. It will taste much better than frozen. Take a knife and cut a couple of slits in the top-- this is not just decorative, but ensures the pie will not explode while baking.

Okay, at the very end I did engage in one bit of nonsense. Beat one egg with just a little bit of water, then brush the top of the pie with it. Sprinkle with about 3 T. more of turbinado sugar.

Place your pie pan on a cookie sheet to catch drips. You're welcome.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes until browned, then turn heat down to 350 degrees and bake another 45 minutes. Look at it every so often to make sure it is not burning (you can cover the edges with foil if this is a problem, and/or turn down the temperature). When done, apples should be visibly bubbling and the bottom of the pie crust (if you have a glass pie pan) should be golden.​You must serve this with vanilla ice cream.